She did not keep him waiting long, and when she arrived it was in haste. She swept aside formality, and he saw that though her face was worried, her eyes were clear.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
She looked at him. ‘I have no doubt you know that my chief huntsman was arrested. They tell me he was plotting against me. Do you know what really happened?’
‘He is dead,’ said Huy. ‘But I am sure that the last thing in his heart was betrayal.’
‘I agree. But there is something else. My little sisters have been sent to the Northen Capital. Ay tells me it is for them to represent the pschent for the Opet festival there; but it is the first I have heard of the Northern Capital celebrating the Opet festival as well as here.’
‘The net is closing,’ said Huy.
‘There is more still,’ the queen continued, pacing up and down, hands fluttering, unable to stay still for a moment. ‘Ay has repeated his request for a marriage.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I asked for time.’
‘What did he say?’
‘That I had none. He gave me five days.’
‘And then?’
‘Nothing.An empty threat.’
‘What will you tell him when the time is up?’
‘That I would rather die than marry him.’
Huy looked at her. ‘You must leave the Southern Capital.’
‘No. I will see my husband buried.’
‘You owe it to him not to join him in the grave. It is not a responsibility that is yours alone any more. You carry a god within you.’
‘A god should be able to take care of himself.’
‘When they are in us they need help. Their power is limited by the frame they inhabit.’
The queen was silent, but she continued to look obstinate. ‘Do not teach me my duty,’ she said finally; and Huy knew that he had won.
‘We must make plans quickly,’ he said cautiously, after a pause.
‘If I survive, and if I find that the king has not, after all, been given the full honour due to him, and if one day I have power to avenge the indignity, I will have horses drag you five times found the limits of the city,’ she told him icily.
‘There must be a boat. Not one of the falcon ships. I doubt if we could trust the sailors anyway,’ said Huy, having shown her with his eyes that he had taken note of her threat.
‘It is too much that I must flee my own city like a criminal,’ she said. ‘Perhaps if I consent to go – and not return – they will let me do so according to my rank.’
‘No,’ said Huy. ‘They will not.’
‘Ay is my own grandfather!’
‘We must find a boat,’ repeated Huy. in the hands of someone we can trust.’
‘Who is there?’ said the queen.
The embalmers had told Senseneb that her father would be ready for the great journey a month after the Opet festival – which still gave her fifty days in the house she had grown up in. Nevertheless, she had started to clear it, parting with most, regretfully bidding farewell to chairs, stools, papyrus rolls, tables, lamps, that she had known all her life. The things she could not bear to part with, Horaha’s medical equipment; the little statue of Imhotep – her father’s hero, the chief minister of the pharaoh Djoser and architect of the first great pyramid at Sakkara over a thousand years earlier; the images of the goddess Hathor, and of the gods Hor-Pa-Khred and Thoth, together with the best furniture and the most loved and important scrolls, she arranged to have shipped south to Napata. Although her future was uncertain, excitement and even pleasure had invaded the sadness and pessimism which had cast a shadow over her since her father’s death. If she could not avenge it, she thought, she could perhaps at least vindicate his life. And perhaps – though this was a hope she did not dare bring fully into her heart yet – her own future would not now be as bleak as she had assumed. She tried not to let herself think about Huy, though already she had started to call him her brother to herself. Her winged heart flew away from her to him, and her body became strong and fluid, like the River, when he came into her thoughts.
Unconsciously, she had begun to take leave of the house already. Once a room was emptied, its character departed immediately, and it was as if it had never had anything to do with her life, or only formed part of a half-remembered dream. Soon the whole place would be like that. What she would regret most would be the garden. Horaha and her mother had spent years creating it, and the medicinal herbs which grew there were thought by some to be the most important collection in the Black Land. As for the animals, the cats and the geese, Hapu’s family would take them.
Senseneb was engaged in clearing a room when she saw Merinakhte standing in the doorway. She stopped what she was doing and looked at him, but said nothing, waiting for him to speak first. He held his body awkwardly, his grey eyes shifting uneasily.
‘What are you doing?’ he said at last.
She resumed her activity without answering.
‘Don’t you have servants to do that?’
‘I have paid some off. Only Hapu is coming away with me. And there are things I like to do myself. In any case, you should be grateful.’
Merinakhte looked worried, it is not my fault that I have inherited your father’s job.’
‘No,’ she replied evenly, it is very fortunate.’
Not catching her irony, he said earnestly, ‘Perhaps it was something decreed by the gods.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’ He pursued the idea eagerly. It seemed that now he had plucked up the courage to speak, the words would come tumbling out of him in a flood. ‘Where are you going?’
For some reason her heart told her not to tell him. ‘I haven’t decided yet. Perhaps to the Northern Capital.’
‘Doesn’t your father have a house somewhere?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘He mentioned it once.’
‘I haven’t had time to go through all his papers.’
‘I could help you.’
She looked at him. Everything about his body was too long, except his breast and thighs, which were flabby. His tiny eyes were like the points of spears in his pale face. He kept staring at a point below her waist, and his long fingers clasped and unclasped.
‘No,’ she said.
He was silent after that, but did not leave his position by the door. He tapped one of his feet up and down, twisting it in and out of his sandal in a manner so violent that for a moment she thought it must be uncontrollable.
She tried to ignore him, biting her lip, praying that he would go; but he stayed, staring. Where, she wondered, had Hapu got to? He had gone to take water for the garden out of the well with the shaduf, but he must have been finished by now.
It was becoming impossible for her even to pretend to work.
‘What do you want?’ she asked finally, straightening and looking at him. She found that she could not bear to for more than a few seconds together.
‘You don’t have to go,’ he said, avoiding her eyes.
‘What?’
‘You don’t have to go.’ He allowed his eyes to meet hers briefly, to check how this comment had gone down, before they darted away again.
‘There’s nothing for me here any more.’
‘There could be.’
She looked at him more carefully. He was trying to smile, achieving a sneer. His arms were folded defensively across his narrow chest, each bony hand grasping a pale forearm. He was like something that lived at the dark bottom of ponds, eating whatever sank there.
‘What do you mean?’ Her scalp crawled. A horrible realisation was coming into her heart.
‘You could stay in this house. With me.’ Now the words were out he seemed almost to regret having spoken them. One hand uneasily scratched its attendant forearm. She noticed that the nails were dirty and their pressure left a livid mark on the skin. Despite herself, she imagined that hand on her body, and felt the moisture of fear and disgust on her palms and forelip. But she had to say something. He was waiting for an answer.